Final Vote Count from Scarsdale Village Elections

Scarsdale Village voters were galvanized by a last minute campaign from two write-in candidates that brought a record number of voters to Village Hall on Tuesday March 15. By 9 pm on Tuesday, 960 machine votes were cast and 68 absentee ballots were submitted for a total of 1,028 votes. The Village election usually brings out around 300 voters and due to the storm in March, 2010 only 150 votes were cast last year.

The Scarsdale Citizen's Non-Partisan Party slate carried the day and the new team at Village Hall is:

• Miriam Flisser –    Mayor
• Stacey Brodsky – Trustee
• Robert Harrison – Trustee
• Robert Steves –   Trustee, second term

Here are the final counts including the machine votes and absentee ballots from Village Clerk Donna Conkling.

For Mayor:

• Miriam Flisser:    798
• Sharon Lindsay: 136
  

For Village Trustee:

• Stacey Brodsky:    855
• Robert Steves:      836
  
• Robert Harrison:   682
• Robert Selvaggio: 139

Though the two write-in candidates trailed in votes, they did bring increased interest to the election and also spurred the Citizens Non-Partisan Party to campaign for votes.

The Non-Partisan election was highlighted by some partisan activities Here are a few observations of activities that took place during the election:

• The Citizen’s Non-Partisan Candidates (CNC) were out shaking hands and distributing leaflets at the train stations on Monday and Tuesday.
• The Citizen's Non-Partisan Party held a phone-a-thon at a local realty office on Monday night to bring out the vote
• The party had three full time poll watchers
• The party retained an election attorney to monitor the vote count
• A policeman was put on duty at the poll after officials received complaints from the election workers and voters about intimidation from the poll watchers.

To some it appeared as if the Citizen’s Non Partisan Party did not trust the Village Clerk, Attorney and election officials to properly run the election and tally the votes.

Despite the drama, the party candidates were the clear victors and more residents became aware of the process and participated. Here is a comment on the election from former Trustee Sharon Lindsay, the write-in candidate for Mayor:

"My sincere congratulations to Miriam, Stacey, Bob Steves and Bob Harrison. You now have our Village's trust and I have confidence that you will serve us wisely.”

“Many have asked if I am disappointed in the election results. Far from it. I am thrilled. Neither I, nor Bob Selvaggio - whom I have yet to meet, but look forward to it! - sought our role or campaigned in this election. But obviously, even the hint -- spread by word of mouth at a grassroots level -- that there might be some choices, engaged our residents. The turnout is multiples of the usual Village election tallies and the number of write-ins (not an easy task to be sure!) exceeded by far any recorded in my memory.”

“There was an ENERGY in this election and I fervently hope that energy can be converted into real changes in our current Non-Partisan system to ensure even greater resident involvement in the future."

When asked to shed some light on yesterdays results, outgoing Mayor Carolyn Stevens was more philosophical about uncontested elections and how the Non-Partisan system works in Scarsdale:

"When the Non-Partisan system is allowed to function the way it should, it serves the Village well. Every so often over the years it loses its way - whether it gets hijacked by people with an agenda, fails to keeps its ear to ground on community issues or allows issue-driven candidates to be selected. When this occurs, some feel that it has not expressed the will of the people and the voters look for a choice in the voting booth. And so those who feel let down by the system mount organized parties to run a slate, or they start a well advertised write-in campaign or, as in this case, some word-of-mouth unorganized grass-roots effort to send a message."